Rolando Lambiase

My lab is any corner of my house. Or outside, in the open air.

C’è sempre stata una scuola del colore e una della linea, un bipolarismo nell’arte e nella cultura occidentali tra irrazionale e razionale, passione sogno fantasia e ragione.
I lavori di Lambiase appartengono al primo di questi due poli. Essi sono indulgenti con le forme e i colori, ai quali permettono anche di tradire ciò che rappresentano, senza malizia ma con gioia. Sulla tela i colori danzano in un’orchestrazione cromatica, erede dell’impressionismo, che risveglia percezioni e sensazioni sopite.
Eppure l’incanto della pittura ha la sua genesi in un profondo ancoramento alla realtà. I dipinti di Lambiase, dunque, sono sogni reali, rêverie, come li definirebbe Bachelard. Sono il frutto dell’immaginazione vigile e sveglia di chi vi si abbandona in solitudine, rimandano allo stupore del bambino davanti a un mondo magico da scoprire, in cui ogni cosa è nuova e niente è banale. Insomma, le tele di questo artista aprono le finestre proprio su quel microcosmo ricordato dal Nietzsche: “Ciò che distingue le menti originali non è essere i primi a vedere qualcosa di nuovo, ma il vedere come nuovo ciò che è vecchio e conosciuto da sempre, visto e trascurato da tutti”.
Grumi di ricordi e impressioni appartenenti all’Io più autentico del pittore si accumulano nella pasta del colore, nei movimenti del pennello. Il poeta J. Follain magistralmente descrive nei suoi versi (Exister) lo stato d’animo dell’artista – in questo caso il poeta – in solitaria simbiosi con la natura: Alors que dans les champs/De son enfance éternelle/Le poète se promène/Qui ne veut rien oublier. Il pittore con il suo cavalletto davanti al mondo è come il poeta chino sul suo foglio a scrivere: entrambi intenti a creare un’altra realtà dalla realtà, ad ascoltare (e osservare) le fantasie e le metamorfosi che tutto ciò che ci circonda (persone, luoghi, oggetti) ci suggeriscono o evocano. Entrambi ben consapevoli che quelle fantasie rivelano qualcosa di primitivo, archetipi di un mondo di cui forse solo nella nostra fanciullezza abbiamo
fatto parte.

Elisa Genna, Critico d'arte e curatrice.

Solo & Group Exhibitions.
-'Domus Talenti', Roma, Art Shopping for Christmas (Dec. 2012)
-Gallery Steiner (Wien, solo, 2-24 April 2012)
-Galleria Rosso Cinabro (Roma, 27 Dec. 2011-13 Jan. 2012)
-Camden Art Gallery (London, 21 Apr.- 2 June 2011)
-Palazzo Genovesi / Tempio di Pomona (Salerno 9 Apr.- 31 May 20119
-Maria Gratia Plena (Salerno, Christmas holidays 2010)
-Montoro Inferiore Town Council (Christmas 2010)
-Galleria Rosso Cinabro (Roma, 2009)
-Villa Carrara (Salerno, spring 2009)
-Hotel Cetus (Cetara, Salerno, 2009)
-Lloyd's Baia Hotel (Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, 2009)
-Works on sale at Lahinch Art Gallery (Ireland)

-Avellino (some towns in the province), 1980's (the theme was the 1980 earthquake), solo;
-Lake Garda (Manerba, Padenghe, Desenzano, Salò), 1990's, solo & group shows;
-Leeds & Liverpool, solo & group shows (1976-77)

Many paintings sold, especially to German customers.
A few works sold or donated to public institutions (Comune di Montoro Inferiore, Avellino; Comune di Manerba del Garda, Brescia)

I am a retired teacher of English language and literature. I taught Italian in Britain (Leeds University) in the seventies. I started painting when I was a kid, may be 12 or 13, encouraged by my art teacher, Mario Carotenuto, now in his 80's and still going very strong. I've never had specific tuition, nor achieved ufficial academic degrees, apart from a secondary school diploma; but, of course, I've been studying History of Art for ages, visiting thousands of exhibitions, meeting many artists (I don't know why most of them homosexual and invariably good friends).
Abstract art doesn't mean anything to me, despite all my good disposition and openness. But what I dislike most (and here my linguistic background takes over) is the sectorial language used by critics. Words meaning themselves, total emptiness.
Yes I prefer figurative art, and in it, colour rather than drawing and perspective.
Oh, I nearly forgot.
I read and write a lot, of course: Art & Literature should always go well together.

My phylosophy on art is straight forward (and already outlined in my bio): reading a book (a novel or a poem) must make you feel happy or satisfied. If it has enriched you, as well, even better. Watching a painting, a sculpture or any other work should rise your best feelings and attitude; if it does not, let the critics do it for the sake of their vanity, or other wicked purposes...

There has always been a school for the colour and one for the line, a bi-polarity in the western art and culture, between the irrational and the rational, passion, dream, fantasy and reason.
Lambiase’s works belong to the first of these two poles. They are indulgent with forms and colours, which even allow to betray what they represent, with joy and without malice. On the canvas the colours dance in a chromatic orchestration, heir of impressionism, which awakens soothed perceptions and sensations.
Nevertheless, the enchantment of his painting has its genesis in a deep anchorage to reality. Lambiase’s works, therefore, are real dreams, reverie, as Bachelard would define them. They are the result of the watchful and acute imagination of who indulges in solitude; they recall the child’s astonishment in front of a magic world to be discovered, in which everything is new and nothing is banal.
Memories and impressions belonging to the painter’s most authentic self accumulate in the colour paste and in the brush strokes. The poet J. Follain masterly describes in his verses (Exister) the artist’s– in this case the poet’s – state of mind while walking in solitary symbiosis with nature: Alors que dans les champs/de son enfance éternelle/le poète se promène/qui ne veut rien oublier. The painter with his easel in front of the world is like the poet bent on his writing paper: they are both going to create another reality from reality, listen to (and observe) the fantasies and metamorphoses that everything around us (people, places, objects) suggest to us and evoke. They are both aware that those fantasies disclose something primitive, archetypes of a world in which may be only our childhood lived.
Elisa Genna, critic and curator

Acrylic, oil, ceramics, mixed media on various supports